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Nuit Blanche Paris 2016

Okay, if you weren't here, it's too late because it was last night. But I would like to clear up a bit of confusion over this event because it is often confused with "museum night" which is in May. The Nuit Blanche has nothing to do with museums, even though certain events take place in museums, but that is more or less an accident. The main focus of the Nuit Blanche (which is the "Sleepless Night" when properly translated and not at all the "White Night") is art installations all over the city. There is absolutely no way to see all of them, so you have to concentrate on the easiest ones or the ones that interest you the most, when you have the luck to know what is happening ahead of time. Even though I have lived in Paris most of my life and try to pay attention to this event, I usually do not have much information about what is going on until I get a copy of the official program, and that is often not until I have been running around trying to see stuff already for an hour or two.

Don't worry about such things. The Nuit Blanche organizes itself and all you really have to do is follow the crowds. Just like in the old days of Soviet Russia, if you see people lining up for something, just get in line and don't worry about what you are going to see or do. Last night I saw lots of people hesitating as though they were afraid of getting ripped off. But everything is free -- even if it is not the most interesting thing in the world, you have only lost 30 minutes at the most.

Every year I am both disappointed and delighted by various things that I have seen. It is just one night a year and I definitely get my money's worth no matter what. However, I always poop out by around midnight, so I will always wonder if it gets better around 2 or 3 a.m.

Anyway, if anybody is planning a trip next year and will be in Paris on the first Saturday of October, here is an example of the things you might see: http://tinyurl.com/nuit2016

Superb, Kerouac!!!! I so wish we could have been this year, it would have been splendid, compared to our dismal experiences in the past. Our prior Nuit Blance adventures did not turn out well. The first time was way back when before we knew Paris. We had no idea what venue was where and we just wandered around, trying to read the program and find addresses on a paper map under dim street lights. We saw a few places by following crowds, but knew not what we were seeing.

The second experience was much more organized, in that we knew our way about and we managed to get a program early, but then it pissed down rain. Between being cold and wet, the program started to melt as we tried to read it under our umbrellas. Sigh --